Interviews
Interviews
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Five Questions for The Secret Scripture Director Jim Sheridan
In Jim Sheridan’s new film The Secret Scripture, based on the novel by Sebastian Barry, the six-time Oscar nominated director returns to themes familiar to him: politics, religion, family and truth. Vanessa Redgrave stars as Rose McNulty, a woman imprisoned for four decades in a mental ward, accused of killing her own son. Not only is she convinced she didn’t kill him, but she believes her son is still alive, and keeps a journal in the margins of a Bible recounting her stories. When the decaying mental ward is on the verge of being turned into a resort, she refuses to move, […]
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I’m Directing My First Documentary Short… Who Cares?
So I’m making my first short documentary. Tentatively titled Sole Doctor, it’s an observational-style film about George, an African-American cobbler who, after keeping shop for 50 years in Portland, Oregon, plans to retire and pass the business on to his son, Joshua. As I’ve chronicled in previous journals for Filmmaker, as a first-time filmmaker, I knew enough to seek advice from the pros before proceeding, and then I made sure to hire a good DP and sound mixer. But, of course, as much as I planned ahead, I still hit some bumps along the road — like our first shoot, when we planned to film […]
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Tom Hanks on Producing vs. Acting: Producers Don’t Get a Free Haircut
Most people know Tom Hanks as a two-time Oscar winning actor. Some would recognize him as the sometimes-director behind works including That Thing You Do!, and others know him simply as his often-nickname “America’s Dad.” But the beloved actor may not be as well known as one of Hollywood’s top producers, with 50 producing credits to his name from Band of Brothers to My Big Fat Greek Wedding to Olive Kitteridge. The actor, who recently picked up a lifetime achievement award at the Rome Film Fest, takes a hands-on role as producer in his own films and those of others, beyond just attaching his […]
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“Student Filmmaking at its Finest”: Don Coscarelli on Phantasm
The first filmmaker I ever interviewed was Don Coscarelli. It was 1998 and I was a junior in college, toiling away at the University of Kentucky student newspaper. Coscarelli agreed to chat about his career for the paper’s Halloween movie page and, clueless as to proper interview decorum — or what might be an appropriate amount of time to monopolize — I asked him about every movie he had ever made. Every. Single. Movie. It was a Frost-Nixon length tête-à-tête, but he was nice enough to humor me. Two decades later — and on the eve of another Halloween — I had […]
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Writer-Director Zach Clark on His Twisted Little Sister
In Zach Clark’s Little Sister, Colleen (Addison Timlin), a former goth girl turned nun, returns home to her dysfunctional family for the first time in years after learning that her brother Jacob (Keith Poulson) is back from fighting the war in Iraq. To cope with her passive father, Bill (Peter Hedges), her bipolar, pot-smoking mother, Joani (Ally Sheedy), and her depressed, disfigured brother, Colleen resurrects her goth persona in hopes of livening things up. Set in 2008, against the backdrop of President Obama’s election, the dark family comedy manages to be both tender and pointed. In a review of the film in Filmmaker, Howard Feinstein called Little Sister “an unaffected masterpiece,” […]
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“It’s. Never. Easy.”: Thommy Hutson on The Id
Thommy Hutson’s new film The Id features a lot of conventions familiar to fans of low-budget horror – limited locations, handheld camerawork, a subjective point of view linked to a protagonist with a fractured psyche – but it stands apart from the crowd thanks to Hutson’s subtle and beautiful approach to color, space, and psychology. The film, which arrives on Blu-ray today, is an eerie character study that follows Meridith (Amanda Wyss), a woman torn between the horrors of caring for an abusive father and the fear of the unknown that comes with escaping the only life she’s ever known. As […]
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Wizard Mode Filmmakers on Why They Went the Digital Distribution Route
Directed by Salazar Film (Nathan Drillot and Jeff Petry), the documentary Wizard Mode relates the story of Robert Gagno, a young man with autism who is one of the world’s highest ranking pinball players. Wizard Mode tracks Robert’s rise on the international pinball circuit and his efforts to forge an independent life for himself. The film, Vimeo’s first-ever original feature, had its world premiere at Hot Docs earlier this year and is available now on Vimeo, VOD and iTunes. Filmmaker recently asked the film’s directors Nathan Drillot and Jeff Petry about working with a subject who has autism, getting the rights to The Who’s iconic “Pinball Wizard,” opting […]
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“We as Filmmakers Entertain You with Violence”: John McNaughton on Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
The phrase “1980s horror” connotes a certain VHS aisle of franchised faces: Freddy, Jason, Chucky, Michael Myers, Pinhead. Far from that pack, like the anti-social loner of John McNaughton’s 1986 landmark film, we have Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Henry looks like a guy you’d actually see on a police lineup, intimidating but anonymous. As conceived by McNaughton and co-screenwriter Richard Fire, Henry lives in a nondescript Chicago apartment, works part time as an exterminator, and, in his spare time, kills people with nauseating ease. McNaughton films the carnage with a radical matter-of-factness, stripping an ostensible horror film of […]
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A Talk with Manchester by the Sea Editor Jennifer Lame
Jennifer Lame is the editor of Manchester by the Sea. She’s best known for having edited all of Noah Baumbach’s narrative films since Frances Ha and is currently in postproduction on his next film, Yeh Din Ka Kissa. At what point did you join the project? I had been following it for a while, since I am a big fan of Kenny’s work. Between my agent and others, I got sent two or three drafts of the script and read them all, but I couldn’t seem to get an interview, I think because they were looking for someone with a bit […]
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Inside Looking Out: Barry Jenkins on Moonlight
Occasionally a movie has the look and feel of something totally original, immediately allowing one to see the protean leap its maker has taken from novice to master. Someday, when the American movie landscape is no more, simply the purview of art historians who live on Mars or on ocean front property in what we used to call Indiana, people will still regard Barry Jenkins’s startlingly effective Moonlight as a unique and supple flower, the kind of heartrending experience that gives rise to the notion that motion pictures can be a lasting, emotionally resonant art form. Drawn from MacArthur “genius” […]
